30 May 2017

Divertimento #128

Vice offers an update on modern sex toys. Compared to sex toys for women, "The male sex toy market is quite unsophisticated."

"Every four days, a kid crashes a stolen car in Pinellas County....Nissans and Fords become dangerous toys in the hands of kids who don’t know how to turn on a car’s lights or put it in reverse. The thieves are as young as 10 and as light as 50 pounds, cranking the seat all the way up, just to see over the steering wheel.
Some are not tall enough to ride all the rollercoasters at Busch Gardens, but they floor the gas pedal to max out the speedometer on the dashboard, all while holding up phones to record videos as proof for friends..."

Reindeer can see ultraviolet light. "In areas where reindeer
live, the sun remains very low in the sky for long periods. This means
the light is scattered such that the majority of light that reaches
objects is blue or UV. Some parts of the environment absorb UV light and
therefore to UV-sensitive reindeer, appear to be black, strongly
contrasting with the snow."

"Elvis has fallen to the status of “novelty act”, according to David
Hesmondhalgh, an author and professor of music at the University of
Leeds, who says that any musician whose image transcends their music
will ultimately fade away: “If you ask a small child about Elvis, the
fact he died on a toilet through overeating or wore a silly suit is all
that registers. The music has become far less important than the
caricature. His image has been cheapened.”"

The Doors were named after Aldous Huxley's The Doors Of Perception, which is a line taken from William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell: “If
the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man
as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all
things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” The Neatorama link notes several other bands named after classic literature references.

And finally, in the category of things you can't make up... in the wake of the Manchester attack, a UK politician calls for the death penalty for suicide bombers. "“But there is one simple step which we can take now: we must bring back the death penalty... I’m not wringing my hands trying to find answers, I’m a politician, it’s my job to come up with answers.””

The embedded images today come from a gallery of Peking opera figures at BibliOdyssey.

Yes Stan B., that's the article. It makes vague claims with no specific reference to any studies to back it up. I assumed this was in jest, but after digging further just now, it appears instead to be a poorly composed summary on this topic which has been floating around in various versions across multiple news sites (ie. Fox, CBS, HuffPo).

So, I went down the rabbit hole to actually dig for any research behind this claim. What I found in my brief search is 1) an interview with a basic science researcher explaining his personal opinion, and even this quote to go with it, "Napper says his idea is still very preliminary, but admits, it's gotten a lot of attention."http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/picking-your-nose-could-be-good-for-you-says-sask-scientist-1.1255167#

and 3) this salient quote, "But Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University and past president of the National Foundation of Infectious Diseases, told ABC News that he doesn't buy this theory -- because people are eating their own boogers quite frequently as it stands. "Because it's part of your own body fluids, you swallow nasal secretions all the time during the day and while you're asleep," he said."

Sorry, but as a physician I'm picky about my medical news sources. No pun intended, haha.

Radiolab has a piece on night terrors with a possible explanation for why we have them

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91528-sleep/

Also, you need to watch your blood pressure about trump - it's not like we were ever going to do anything, at least at the federal level, to come into compliance with the Paris Treaty. It's all political theater (at least until the Gulf Stream shuts down)

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